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| Home Page > Travelogues > Poland > Wieliczka
Having traveled around Europe as extensively as I have, I sometimes find myself falling into a pattern -- ho hum, another old town, sigh, another castle, yawn, a pile of churches... but every once in a while, you come across something that is so unique it stands out in your mind. I had such an experience in southern Poland recently. I mean, how many cities do you know of that has a fully excavated salt mine, loaded with salt statues, sculptures, chapels, perilous corridors, etc.? The only one I know of is in the small town of Wieliczka (vee-LEECH-ka). This, I assure you, is not your ordinary tourist trap.
Definitely one of the better excursions I've ever taken! Taking pictures is particularly difficult in the salt mine because flash is almost a necessity, but flash causes a strange snowflake effect due to reflections from individual salt crystals in the wall. The best pictures I took were helped via an incadescent light that another tourist used with his video camera, or were taken in heavily lighted rooms like the main church. Also, you have to 'buy' permission to use a camera inside the salt mine -- at the time I visited, it was 8 złoty (about US$2). Trip taken 2 September 2001 -- Page last updated 08 April 2006 -- (C) 2001 Tom Galvin Useful Links:
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The salt mine building itself is rather unassuming, just a plain
soft yellow building with a scaffold, a small flower garden in front, and a
warehouse in back. But, underneath it, and underneath the entire town of
Wieliczka, lay 300km of excavated corridors reaching down as low as 400
meters. The tourist route covers only the first three of the twenty levels
of the mine, two kilometers in length. And you start out walking, down,
down, down, 800 steps to get to the first room -- so you best be in decent shape
when you do this! (It took us about 20 minutes to cover it -- the museum
has a full listing of the physical requirements to make this trip).
Once you get to the first level, however, the whole place flows
with salty eye candy. The mine is currently inactive, but when it was
active, some of the miners passed the time by sculpting into the blocks of gray
rock salt, in some cases leaving behind sculptures such as of the famous Polish
scientist Mikolaj Copernicus (right). Many of the individual sculptures
were based on famous Polish individuals, mostly kings and statesmen, while some
others furthered the legend of the mining gnomes -- small white-bearded men that
worked secretly in the mine while no human was looking.
But the miners didn't stop with individual statues, oh no!
They created over 40 full chapels, ranging from about 20 sq m to the massive
church pictured at left, loaded with engraved wall murals of the Last Supper and
other biblical events, lighted madonnas, and a simulated tiled floor that is
nothing more than symmetric lines etched into the salty floor, kept polished by
people walking on it! Note the chandeliers -- they are made entirely by
salt crystals carved out the mine! Look also for a full-sized statue of
Pope John Paul II here.
There are also sculptures of a political nature -- such as
at right, depicting Polish solidarity, various wooden elevator mechanisms, and
systems of scaffolding (using massive logs and wooden beams) that help keep the
mine from collapsing. There are small evaporating lakes, models of horses
used to truck rocks of salt around the mine, and a seemingly never-ending maze
of corridors. Then, when the tour ends, you get to ride the elevator to
the top -- a four level sardine can that zips up to the surface gift shop faster
than you can say, "Take that with a grain of salt."
